Prostitution In Victorian England

When someone examines the case of Jack The Ripper, the victims are the most important part. The canonical five had one thing in common, the fact that they had all been involved in prostitution. When the press began to cover the killings and reported about the victims, what they wrote was consistent with the understanding of prostitution in the late-19th century. In order to understand beliefs that the Victorian people had about prostitution, on most understand the idea of the fallen women. Throughout this essay, I will, explain the idea of the fallen women, select parts of reports about the canonical five victims and explain how they are consistent with the understandings of prostitution during that time. All of the reports of the victims,

Victorian women of reputation did not consider intercourse pleasurable and felt that intercourse was a duty that they were obligated to do for their husbands. This was different from women who were prostitutes because they were considered women who enjoyed intercourse. This was not necessarily true. Biblical ties to the ideology of fallen women can be tied to the Book of Genesis. The story of when Eve was tempted to eat the forbidden fruit and how she fell from the grace of God and became the original sinner. In Victorian London during the year 1841, there was an estimated 55,000 prostitutes in the Greater London area. A common belief was that if a women was abandoned by her community and then lost her job, that prostitution was one of the only ways to make money. Prostitution was a way of survival for woman that had no other way to support themselves. Statistics also show that women who came from poor families were more likely to become prostitutes rather than women who come from a middle or upper class family. With Victorian society, once she chose the profession of prostitution is was not allowed back in the respectable society. According to Mason Long

A painting painted by Richard Redgrave in 1851 depicted a father casing out and disowning his daughter and legitimate child while the rest of her family is begging the father not too. This painting would make the observer feel sorry for the daughter and the child. It could also be a warning to other women around the age of the daughter in the painting that being immoral could lead to their own families casting them and their unwanted children on to the streets. Many other famous artists have portrayed fallen women in their art such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti and George Frederic Watts. Besides art, literature also had an obsession with fallen women. Many authors had characters that were fallen women who were met with the same fates. These characters include Maggie Tulliver from George Eliot's Mill On The Floss, who drowns in a flood after she is suspected of sexual deviance. Another character is Nancy from Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist who is murdered by her lover. These are only two character from literature from the Victorian era that depicted with dying violent deaths after being or being considered fallen